Visioneer ends direct involvement in Europe

Computers Unlimited offers hope that peripherals maker will keep a presence in the UK market

Peripherals maker Visioneer will close its European operations, but has started talks with Computers Unlimited (CU) to retain a UK presence.

According to a Visioneer representative, the UK subsidiary?s three-strong team will be disbanded. The Visioneer team was headed by Charles Kennard since October 1995. He was the former European regional manager for Radius.

Justin Anderson, CU director of marketing, admitted that CU was in discussions with Visioneer to maintain a distribution channel in the UK.

?Our intention is to secure the best possible deal, not just in the UK but potentially within Europe, because we now have a European business,? he said. ?We have the infrastructure in place to enable this product to reach a greater market.?

Anderson indicated that Visioneer was expected to drop its other distributor, Ingram Micro. ?It?s certainly happened on many occasions that vendors have started off with a sole distribution relationship with ourselves, taken on more and had to go back to just us.?

But an Ingram Micro representative said: ?We continue to carry the Visioneer range, and there are no plans to terminate the relationship.? Ingram was not aware of the closure of the European operations.

Visioneer makes Paperport, a scanner which attaches to a PC keyboard. But the product has been superseded by cheaper copies, notably colour versions. A source close to CU said: ?Although the Visioneer range is very good, it didn?t produce a colour version fast enough.?

Visioneer was unavailable for comment at press time.